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Poetry Quotes
"I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry."
41
"Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one."
41
"There may be more poetry than justice in poetic justice."
41
"With several different kinds of poetry to choose from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem."
41
"The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also."
41
"I realizedJune had never beenjust a monthmusic...never just a trembleon my lipswarmth was nevermerely a blanket."
41
"I don't like political poetry, and I don't write it. If this question was pointing towards that, I think it is missing the point of the American tradition, which is always apolitical, even when the poetry comes out of politically active writers."
40
"Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things."
40
"Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks."
40
"I'm as much influenced by Joseph Smith and the Mormons as I am, more so, than by Eliot. Actually, I'm much more influenced by the poetry of the Mormons."
40
"I come here to speak poetry. It will always be in the grass. It will also be necessary to bend down to hear it. It will always be too simple to be discussed in assemblies."
40
"The tradition of Russian literature is also an eastern tradition of learning poetry and prose by heart."
40
"The same people who are murdered slowly in the mechanized slaughterhouses of work are also arguing, singing, drinking, dancing, making love, holding the streets, picking up weapons and inventing a new poetry."
40
"It is true that short forms of poetry have been cultivated in the Far East more than in modern Europe; but in all European literature short forms of poetry are to be found - indeed quite as short as anything in Japanese."
40
"Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people."
40
"There is a wonderful Hungarian literature, especially in lyric poetry."
40
"Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation."
40
"There are some poemsthat we leave behindsome that leave us behindwhile some just livesilentlyin the heartcrumble, sometimesdwindledisappeardieand are rebornwhen you smile again."
40
"To know anything of a poet but his poetry is, so far as the poetry is concerned, to know something that may be entertaining, even delightful, but is certainly inessential."
39
"Freedom is poetry, taking liberties with words, breaking the rules of normal speech, violating common sense. Freedom is violence."
39
"I don't think poetry is something that can be taught. We can encourage young writers, but what you can't teach them is the very essence of poetry."
39
"I think that great poetry is the most interesting and complex use of the poet's language at that point in history, and so it's even more exciting when you read a poet like Yeats, almost 100 years old now, and you think that perhaps no one can really top that."
39
"At this point we've answered about every question you could possibly imagine about Deep Space Nine, so we do this thing called Theatrical Jazz, where we do a show of bits and pieces of things from plays and literature, poetry... stuff that we like. It's fun."
39
"The poetry of this one is called philosophical, of that one philological, of a third rhetorical, and so on. Which is then the poetic poetry?"
39
"I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry."
39
"The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry."
39
"As the sky prepares to settle its tired, aching feetinto the night's velvet slippersI settle, into my armchair, soaking the teabag,of my thoughts, into warm liquidy stars."
39
"Perhaps there is an idea among Japanese students that one general difference between Japanese and Western poetry is that the former cultivates short forms and the latter longer ones, gut this is only in part true."
39
"I don't look on poetry as closed works. I feel they're going on all the time in my head and I occasionally snip off a length."
39
"Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it."
39
"If it is an imperfect word, no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry."
39
"The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry."
39
"I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were."
39
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